Most of the time, being part of the Legion of Christ felt like being trapped in a cage.

It wasn't a cage made of bars.

It was quieter than that, beautiful even maybe that's what made it hard to leave.

It was a golden cage.

When I was Gonzagrada, I was traveling, meaning very interesting people, and had a purpose that I thought was superior.

But a golden cage is still a cage, and inside it I often felt like a helpless kitten, kept still, unquiet, told how to dress, when to eat, or to sit, always watching the world through a window I wasn't allowed to open.

Sometimes I let my mind wonder what if I just walked away and left.

I didn't dream it aloud, never told anyone, but I thought about it a lot late at night, staring at the ceiling on long walks, in moments of silence.

I imagine the life I had missed out, on the things I had dreamed of doing Georgetown University, diplomacy, a life that had once belonged to me.

And every time, as if he could smell the doubt, Masielle would reach out.

His advice never came with comfort.

He came with fear.

Disguised as spiritual counsel.

Once it came in the form of a letter dated March third, nineteen ninety I see all too clearly the devil's tricks that are hunting you.

Naturally, I'm not willing to play this game.

The cost would be far too high.

In the end, only he would win, not you, not me, not God nor Jesus Christ, who would suffer your departure like yet another thorn cry I'm painfully driven into his heart.

I didn't want the devil's voice inside me.

That scared me more than the doubts, so I pushed through.

I stayed even after nineteen ninety seven, when the accusations came out in Jason Barry's article.

That same year, something else happened.

My father had a stroke, a serious one.

It almost killed him, but I didn't find out until days later.

My superiors didn't tell me because I was supposed to lead a group of students to Rome for a Legion event.

They didn't want to disrupt the mission.

They said God's will will come first.

That was a moment something broke.

These people weren't my family.

They didn't care about me.

I could have lost my father.

It wouldn't have mattered to them.

That was the moment I started to pull away emotionally.

By late two thousand and one, I was falling apart.

I had lost thirty pounds.

My mind felt like it was cracking open.

I couldn't say, I couldn't leave.

I was breaking in both directions, and then one of them.

Ber night, I found myself staring at the window, the bare branches scraped against the glass.

Inside, everything was still just a low hum of the heater and the soft creek of old floors.

The wind luwed me to sleep, and I fell into a deep dream.

It's a dream that still haunts me.

I tried to put it into words in an interview, and in that moment when I had this dream, it was the dream of a kitten that had finally found his way up to an olive tree.

But the kitten was being attacked by two huge government dogs, and they were barking on us, moving the tree so forcefully that the kitten was about to fall.

And in my dream, I kept running toward it, just begging it to stay on the train I fall the kitten analog instrumendous side.

I got very emotional, but the kitten fell, I was grabbed.

I want one of the dogs, and the dogs started just killing it back and forth with you know, tossing the kitten back and forth, and finally made it.

I had the option to open the dogs stout and remove the kitten from its teeth jaw and try to get him back to life or just to give him a sweet death at that point, and I chose for it to live, so I opened the dogs jaw and took the kitten in my arms.

I woke up and I knew immediately that was me and I had to run.

So that's what I did.

I didn't want to be the helpless kitten anymore, tossed around waiting for someone else to save me.

I might come out of this hurt, unbroken, but I would be alive, and to live first, I had to set myself free.

My name is Elena Sada and this is my story, is the story of how I learned to hide, to cry, to survive and eventually how I got out.

And this is secret scandal, the many Secrets of Marseilles Maseil episode six.

After the Fall will be back after the Break.

I was eighteen when I joined the Legion and thirty seven when I left.

Other than my family, it was the only home I had ever known.

In the first few episodes of this series, I talked about what it was like to live as a concertrata, the manipulation, decoration, the subtle waste, masilles, ordered, capitals obedient.

It took me nineteen years to break, But when I finally did, I had to take a hard look at my options, at whether I could even try to leave.

I had no money, no job, no plan.

I didn't even have my passport.

I had never paid a bill.

I didn't know how to rent an apartment or open a bank account.

My world and the Legion had been completely controlled.

Everything in my life, my clothes, my schedule, my thoughts had been decided for me.

Leaving meant stepping into a world I didn't understand, and worst, it meant doing it alone.

The idea of living had lived in my head for years, but every time I got close, I would freeze.

What would happen to me?

What would my family say?

How would I survive?

Still, a small voice on my head slowly grew into a roar, telling me that if I didn't find a way, I would die here.

An entire life lived under Massielle's thumb.

It was November one, two thousand and one fall in Maryland.

The air out side still held a chill from the Potomac River.

I was inside one of the Legion's centers, what most people would probably call a convent.

It was still dark when I woke up that day.

I was shaking.

A scream had yanked me out of my dreams.

I didn't know if it had come from me or one of the other women, almost girls.

The only thing I knew was that I had to leave and fast.

If I didn't act now, I would never do it.

I looked at my watch.

It was five twenty five am.

Around me, everyone slept.

I slid my legs over the side of the bed.

The wood was cold under my feet.

The room looked the same as always, neat and lifeless.

I thought about gathering my things, but nothing really belonged to me.

Even the slippers by my bed were the Legions, so I left everything behind.

They even had my passport logged somewhere.

I remember walking down the hallway thinking if it would be possible to get a new one.

Every creek felt like it could give me away.

I moved slowly, quietly past the bedrooms, past the sleeping women I had lived with for years.

I knew each of the breathing patterns by heart.

I couldn't believe I was living without saying good bye.

But I couldn't risk it.

Monsieur would find out and gild me into stands for the hundredth time.

At the stairs, I hesitated.

His photo was right there, holding the Eucharist, his eyes fixed on me, judging.

I could hear his voice inside my head.

If you leave, you'll carry the weight of all the souls you are meant to save.

I answered him silently, I'm sorry, Admasil, but tonight I choose to live downstairs.

I reached the visitor's bathroom near the front door, the only one with a mirror big enough to see myself, really see myself.

I closed the door, locked it.

I changed quietly.

My hands were shaking.

I didn't flush the toilet.

I couldn't risk the sound.

I looked on my body, O what was left of me?

I was so thin.

I looked like a shadow of the woman I used to be.

I hadn't seen myself naked in a full length mirror in years.

The bathroom time was so tightly controlled.

Three minutes in and out, not time to look, barely time to think.

But here, for the first time in a long time, I saw everything, and it startled me.

I slipped a simple dress over my head.

For the first time in almost twenty years.

I could feel my bare breasts, thighs, and knees against the fabric.

It felt strange, but it also felt like freedom.

I I opened the door and looked into the living room one last time.

That's when I heard it.

Someone upstairs had woken up, a voice, maybe calling my name.

I couldn't be sure, and I didn't want to find out.

I rushed into the cool night air and didn't look back.

I touched the pocket on my chest.

My Metro card was still there.

I knew if I moved quickly enough, I could reach the train before sunrise.

By the time I made it to the Potomac station, the black knight was easing into a pale pink.

At six thirty am, the train doors opened and I stepped inside Destination Washington d C.

I sat there, shaking, finally realizing what I had done, still dressed like a concertrata, afraid someone might come after me, And then right there in front of a train full of morning commuters.

I broke down.

It was two thousand and one, just weeks after the towers fell.

New York and DC were still on edge.

Grief hung heavy in the air, but so did something else, an unexpected softness, a kind of tenderness between strangers.

People were sensitive, raw open.

Yeah, I cried and then I People were sensitive to what had just happened.

So I think it was a very common, a common scene, you know, it was.

It was.

There was a lot of pain.

I remember this woman sitting beside me, asking are you okay?

And I said no, but I'm alive.

That train was the beginning of everything, of me trying to rebuild a life I had forgotten how to live.

But as the train pulled closer to the sea, part of me still wondered had I really escaped?

Because even out there in the real world, outside the Legion, Messille still had power.

He was still giving masks, surrounded by thousands of followers, many of them were my closest friends, my mom, my family.

To most people, he was still a saint, adored and untouchable.

At least that's what I thought.

I thought I was the only one who saw him clearly, But someone else had been watching too, someone powerful and patient, and he was about to make his move more and that after the break.

It was two thousand and three, two years since I had left the Legion, I started therapy, I had fallen in love, I had gotten married.

I was trying to put my life back together, peace by peace.

But even from the outside, Mazille's shadows still lingered over me.

It felt like no matter how many lives he had shattered, it was impossible to bring him down.

And it wasn't for lack of trying.

In Mexico, Josel Barba had gone to the press.

In the United States, Jason Berry had published his investigation in the Hartford Current.

In Rome, Alberto Atier had launched a canonical process inside the church, and still nothing happened.

I kept telling myself to move on.

Part of me was still waiting for someone somewhere to finally see what I saw, to see the monster he really was, so the world could understand why I had run.

Turns out someone had been watching all along from the inside the Vatican, someone who believed the victims, who knew exactly what Marseille was, but also knew that timing was everything.

That man was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.

Ratzinger was a very interesting man of an intellectual, a philosopher, and he really was I don't know he talked to us.

He was very austere, he wasn't a centatious at all, and he was a very smart man in general.

That's ROBERTA.

Garza.

She's a journalist who's been investigating the religion of Christ for more than fifteen years.

She's also my cousin.

You heard her voice in episode two as well.

During the papacy of John of the Second, Masille was a very very close friend and ally of the pope.

They both united around the fierce anti communism they shared and the way the church should be run.

So that's why Mazielle had touched every accusation over the decades.

That's why he was still the leader of the Legion of Christ, giving mass, traveling surrounded by followers.

The Vatican, especially under John Paul the Second, loved something about Mazielle and the Legion of Christ.

He gave money to high members of the Church of the Kuria, to cardinals in high places, in high power, and it wasn't necessarily even illegal.

He just gave, you know, envelopes from Marcelle mazill or from the Legion of Christ for your good works, you know, for your charitable works.

And of course they might, but they were, you know, envelopes filled with cash.

Several of those envelopes went straight to a man with the power to bury any investigation, Angelo Sodano.

He was the Vatican Secretary of State, the Dean of the College of Cardinals, and Massielle's personal shield.

Every time a complaint showed up, so did an envelope, sometimes carrying up to fifteen thousand dollars, always landing on Sodano's desk.

This was during Ratzinger's time as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vaticans watchdog.

And he was nothing like Sodano.

And Rattinger was also very very strict and very austere.

He was really truly a man like almost a Franciscan style of life.

And he detested seeing massiel And you know, in his mercedes and going about out and about and you know, first class, et cetera.

He actually, Cardinal Ratzinger wanted to proceed with an investigation, but Angelo Sodano stopped it.

He stopped it at every turn.

He impeded it because he was a huge ally also of marcell Mazille.

That was the real reason alberto Jas canonical process went nowhere.

It wasn't because Rassinger didn't believe the victims.

He had read the testimonies and seen the patterns.

He wasn't naive.

He knew Massile was sturdy.

Ratzinger knew very well the accusations against Maziele.

I mean, the whole church knew them since a very long time ago.

You must remember that, ever since the forties and fifties the first accusations against Maciele were given.

But Rasinger also understood something most people didn't.

In the val truth isn't enough.

You need timing, you need power, and above all, you need political cunning.

Ralsinger knew Masielle was protected.

That's what he'd said years earlier when Alberto Atis complained landed on his desk.

Back then, he told that tier his hands were tied, that Mazille was very dear to the Pope, that the legion brought in too much money, too many vocations.

Going after him meant fighting against the whole system that protected him.

And Ratzinger knew he couldn't win that fight, not yet, so he was patient.

He just had to wait for one thing, the moment when the child a round Mazielle cracked.

A few years later, his chance came.

Until two thousand and four when Dropoulo Second was dying and he was a prefect for the doction of the faith.

So with the Pope Jounpull the Second basically unconscious and unable to stop or do anything, she ordered the investigation.

It was quite strategic, almost invisible, but it worked, and four months later, on April second, two thousand and five.

The Holy Father John Paul the Second died this evening at nine thirty seven in his private apartment.

With that the shield was finally gone.

For the first time in his life, Mazille was completely vulnerable.

Lsinger didn't waste the second.

He moved fast because he knew his window of opportunity was small.

The concluct that would decide a new pope could take weeks, maybe months, but his investigation could take years, and if the wrong person took power, it could all be buried again.

And one of the top contenders to replace jump On the Second was none other than Angelo Sodano, Massill's most powerful protector, the man who had blocked the investigation before and could do it again.

And if Angelo Sodano hap became the pope had won the throne, that would have been completely squashed, as it had been with Jump on the second.

And Sodano wasn't a long shot.

He was one of the names being whispered inside the conclave.

Fans of the twenty twenty four movie Conclave got a taste of the secretive process.

For my non conclave heads, here's what really happens.

The Concliff is the secret election held after a pup dies.

The case of the Vatican close and inside, the cardinals gather.

They come from every corner of the glove, dressed in crimson robes.

They swear notes of secrecy and lose any contact with the outside world, just silence, prayer, and ballots.

The voting takes place inside the Sistine Chapel under Michelangelos Frescos.

The ballots are handwritten, folded, and collected twice a day.

To win, a candidate must have a two thirds majority.

If no one reaches that, the votes are burned in a small stove and they try again for days weeks it once took three years.

In the meantime, the world around them waits for smoke.

Black means no decision, White means a new pope.

This time it didn't take long.

The Concliff of two thousand and five lasted just two days, one of the shortest in modern history.

Hello, and welcome to the night show.

I was watching the news when the white smoke rose from the Vatican's chimney.

A few minutes later, Cardinal Josephvassinger stepped onto the balcony, now Pope Benedict the sixteenth.

In that moment, I remember the first time I met him.

It was years earlier, in the late nineties, when I was still like Concerrada.

I was standing with a group of veryan Christy candidates on a cold morning in Rome.

When he entered the room, he didn't greet us.

There was no warmth in his tone or his body language.

I remember telling him that Father Marziella appreciated him very much.

His face changed immediately, he went pale, and then he left without responding.

It was known he wasn't a fan of the legion.

At that time, I couldn't understand why, but now looking back, it makes sense.

This was after he'd received Alberto Atier's letter, the same one we heard about last episode, the one filled with testimonies.

So when I saw him take the papers in two thousand and five, I thought, finally, Monsiel isn't best friend with the pope anymore.

Maybe now the world will see.

And just like that, a few months later, something extraordinary happened.

Monciel declined, being relected as the highest leader of the Legion of Christ.

To be clear, the news reported that he'd declined, but we all knew what that really meant, and Massiel was in trouble.

He declined that, and I remember by the time I was already working at the newspaper.

I remember thinking, this is not normal.

He would never ever linguish power on his own.

He would have to be absolutely dead to relinquish power.

If he did this, it's because something really, really bad is coming.

Razinger was coming.

Marsile knew it.

He knew the investigation had been reopened, he knew he was exposed and unprotected.

So before anyone could say anything, he stepped down.

He retired as head of the Legion, but it wasn't really a retirement.

Massielle was removed from his position.

That moved alone made people think, this is it.

After decades of silence.

This felt different, like real justice was finally within reach this time.

Maybe he'd go to trial, maybe new victims would speak up, Maybe the Church would finally call him what he was, a criminal, a pedophile.

Finally people would understand all the damage he had caused.

And then a few months later, the Vatican made an announcement.

They said Monsieur would be removed from ministry, he would no longer be allowed to act as a priest.

And we all waited, expecting the acts to fall, for the bigger official punishment to be handed down, And then it came.

He was sent into a life of prayer and penance.

That means he could not no longer speak in public as a priest.

He could no longer give any sacraments, mass, marriages, baptisms, anything like that.

He could not speak, he could not lead his order.

He had to retire from that.

That was it, After all, he had done a life of prayer and penance.

He got a slither off into obscurity.

I remember that at the time, I was working as a school district supervisor.

It was a Friday afternoon.

I stopped by the main office to drop off a note, and that's when I saw it, a photo of Masielle and a headline from the New York Times dated May nineteenth, two thousand and six.

The Vatican punishes a leader after abuse charges.

I grabbed the paper and read the article ended with a statement from the Legion.

Masielle had long declared his innocence and had decided not to defend himself, following the example of Jesus Christ.

There was no explanation, no mention of the victims, no nudgement of what he had done on He was just told to step aside quietly.

That was it.

But something had shifted.

The silence around him finally started to crack for the first time ever.

People were ready to listen, the media, the church, and so was I.

Little by little, I started listening, and once I did, I couldn't stop.

I thought leaving the Legion would be the end of it, but it wasn't, because what I had lived was the only the tip of the iceberg, and the things that came to light after that were worse than I ever imagined.

Their views we knew about what had been in Jason Barry's article.

It was only the beginning.

The real truth was worse than what any of us had been prepared to believe.

That's next on Secer Sky Sacre Scandal.

The Many Secrets of marcell Maseil is a production of A half podcast in partnership with Iheartmichael Doula podcast network, and is hosted by me Elena Sada, written by Menissa Hendrix and Alvalo ses Pedes, Produced by alvaaloce Pedes and Robert Tagarza.

Research and reporting by Robert Tagarza, edited by Jasmine Rometo with the help of Carmen Graterol.

Fact checking by Annapla Dovar.

The vocal coach for me Elena Sada is in a Tapia.

Executive producers at a Half Podcast are Carmen Graterov, Isaac Lee, and j H Car mixing on sound designed by Patrick and Jones.

Original music by Darko and I Am based on Patrick Hart's original composition.

Executive producers that I Heard are Leo Gomez and Arlene Santana.

Alexi Scardoza also serves as producer.

Circars Scandal was created by Melanie Bartley and Paula Varos